Hi,
After many days of training I just completed my first mission, STS-121. Mission control saved me from screwing up the mission at last minute, when capcom told us to deploy landing gear.This prevented me from landing with the gear retracted, because I had forgotten to arm it before. I quickly executed the entire deployment sequence as I was already starting to perform the flare! What a s****d way to ruin a perfect flight this would have been! In real life I´m sure I would have been permanently grounded for this.
Other than that incident, I only had to face a major problem during the mission. In the first EVA, any attempt to make EV-1 pitch, yaw or roll made it disappear and I had to perform the hole EVA only with translation movements (I know it's going to be fixed in the next patch). During EVAs 2 and three dindn't have that problem. The countless hours of RMS training really paid off and all grapples were quite easy.
There were a couple of 'magical' moments during the EVAs when I had time to relax for a while and behold the Earth as I was listening Brian Eno's Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks on the background. For years I wanted to to do this in a sim! (and in real life of course
There's only one thing that keeps bugging me. I know STS 121 landed at 9:14 AM in real life. However I landed at night. What was wrong? How can I land at the right time? (I guess this question is more appropiate for the help forum) On the other hand, this gave me the chance to have the reentry at night and with all the cockpit lights dimmed, the plasma glow was an incredible show. I can only imagine how exciting this must be in real life!
